Round up

The course content was very challenging. It could take more than 2 hours a day to read background materials and write discussion posts. But the tasks were really feasible and flexible. They didn’t require to read this and this, but to use multiple resources to get a better idea of the technology and its integration. I don’t think there is anything to take out so far. Maybe some time in the future when technology advances. Of course there may be something to include, but at what expense?

The course is a good example to follow when organizing one of your own.  There was a great deal of development work done before we were invited to taste it. The course helped me to look at some things from a different angle: using social networks for education, writing blogs for reflection, or using rubrics for self-assessment. I finally attempted to develop a webquest, and saw it wasn’t at all scary. Sometimes I had an illusion that we were doing everything ourselves, there wasn’t anybody to actually teach us. Yet, when you think you did everything yourself – that’s the best evaluation of your teacher’s efforts to make you think so.

There were many other amazing things: multiple intelligences and technology; developing online exercises and websites; rubrics generation, etc. Everything made me think about the content and how it may mix with technology. Next week the academic year begins. What a perfect time to start implementing changes in our teaching with technology! I am also very excited about sharing my new skills with my colleagues through an online workshop, face-to-face training, and a masterclass.

Yesterday I felt so happy to find a browser that claimed to help me solve the problem with Blogger censorship. Unfortunately, I couldn't post a comment on Santiago's blog, and had to send him a personal message on Nicenet. Here is my comment:

I have similar impressions of the course. Although it's not my first experience, this course was more challenging than others, it kept me in tonus all the time. The resources suggested in the course are very useful, and motivated me to try some of them out in my project. As you may have noticed, I had some problems with the Blogger. So I just thought of it as an example for setting a blog at some other blog platform.

However, providing more links to each topic can be somewhat confusing. Yet there is a class wiki where these links may be shared. I am happy with Delicious where I can access the links shared by my peers.

I agree that the course was great. There was much novelty in it not only for you with less technology experience, but for me as well. Actually, when I assessed my level of technology integration, I was surprised to find myself at Level 2 with some features of Level 3. So, there's a lot to strive for!

Final Project Submitted - Long Live the Final Project!

This week brought me closer to the end of the course. It gave me a feeling of accomplishment, because I finally managed to develop a webquest and wrote my final project report. I had a look at a couple of final projects: Svitlana’s and Mykola’s. I was really impressed by Mykola’s report, which is more like an academic research paper. The tools Mykola selected for his project (Facebook platform and ANVILL voiceboard and live chat) are very challenging, and I appreciate his effort very much. The idea of the use of Facebook for educational purposes attracts me very much. Voiceboard and livechat which provide synchronous communication between students and teachers are very powerful tools. At the same time, one needs to take into consideration possible language use or speaking anxiety of students, pressure of online communication, and possible inability to participate in online events at proposed time. Therefore, some asynchronous communication events could be a comprehensible solution.

Svitlana published her webquest on “Recent Developments and the Future of IT”. I found Svitlana’s approach and ideas very similar to mine. It may probably be accounted to similar settings, target group characteristics and needs. I decided to develop a webquest for two main reasons: first, it was something I haven’t used before; second, I had thought it time-consuming and not worth the effort, so I wanted to have a go and see. As I was working at it I got involved in the process and saw possible bottle necks for my students. The most complicated part was the content and the practical outcome. This is where I could still work.  I hope it will get better with practice. I thought getting students involved in the assessment of their group members’ collaborative work skills and familiarizing them with the criteria for evaluation before the task would contribute much to building their communication skills. This may also encourage them to work better towards the end-result.  

Svitlana’s project also included a Powerpoint presentation of students’ findings in recent IT developments and, in addition, an essay on the future of IT. She is very detailed about the degree to which her students should perform the writing task. I went through the webquest at http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=108943 and wrote a review.  

This week’s readings were very useful for bringing together theory and practice of multiple intelligences. I received a clearer insight into learner styles interaction with technology tools used in the classroom. Thanks to Mykola and others there is a list of learner styles and corresponding technology use to cater their needs. I will study my students’ learner styles using the Learning Styles chart at http://www.chaminade.org/INSPIRE/learnstl.htm, and/or the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire at http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html and will try to develop tasks engaging most of them.

Online Course Development

This week I felt very pressed for time. The project plan, interactive exercise design, website and blog… Everything needed thorough attention. However, making a website technically is not difficult for me, as using Dreamweaver I produced the official website for NATEK, the National Association of Teachers of English of Kazakhstan, and now administer its second version (see: http://natek.kz).  What is complicated – it’s the content.  I understand that I should have started with a scheme of what I wanted to see on the site. Then it would be easier to organize a tree picture of the site. For example, at NATEK website along with the static information, which is easily edited, there is a Forum for discussion and a Moodle platform for delivering a course/workshop/conference.

Again I experienced problems with the Blogger, so I created a new account at Livejournal.  So, I think I can have my students start a blog at any available blogging website. I appreciate the features of Nicenet. However I noticed that it’s difficult to follow a thread there. When I want to reply to someone’s comment, it appears under the main message, not under the comment itself. But the platform is very easy to navigate and use for an online course discussion. 

Google Docs is a helpful tool for sharing documents. I used it to insert Rubrics into the website and to make a course assessment survey. The survey I shared was developed for assessment of the course that rural teachers took as a part of their professional development. They were required to fill it online to practice their web skills.

Social networks like Ning also offer a great variety of opportunities for organizing online seminars. They provide features like: chat, forum, blog, foto/movie uploading, events, etc. Unfortunately, Ning is not free, but there are others which are. Students often access them from their mobile phones, so they may be used for educational purposes as well. I suppose the unusual use of social networks will be exciting for my students.

This week there was an E-Teacher Scholars’ Conference at the university of Maryland, and I watched some of the presentations online. I learned that there was Perizat Abeldinova, a participant from Kazakhstan, with an interesting project on Incorporating the Interactive Web into Teaching English: A Workshop for English Teachers. It was implemented at her University, but I think I could invite her to deliver an online master class for Kazakhstani teachers.

Learner Autonomy and One Computer Classroom

I was fascinated by this week’s topics! Both learner autonomy and one-computer classroom seem very attractive to me, because they reflect our present situation most of the time, and demonstrate the active role of the teacher in promoting learner autonomy.  Learner autonomy linked to, or even based on motivation is what makes good language learning. Unless students take the responsibility for their own learning, they won’t be successful.

In my post I mentioned Z. Dornyei’s research. I thoroughly studied it when working on my master’s thesis. My research on my students’ motivation was greatly supported by his ideas.  Since then I became a great fan of educational psychology, especially L2 learning motivation.

One-computer classroom, with an LCD projector, or a whiteboard, or without any, is very realistic in today’s school. So, bringing attention to the use of it in our course was very thought-provoking. It made me review the ways of using it as an administrative, learning, or other tool.  In “Shaping the Way We Teach” course by Leslie Opp Beckman I learned about the ideas for learning stations. So a PC may be one of such stations, which allows every student (in smaller classes) go through the task and move on to another having acquired new knowledge or skill.

Target Action - Developing a Webquest

Sometimes details don’t allow to see a whole picture. I am very glad that in the readings I came across “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever” by Chickering and Ehrmann (http://polaris.umuc.edu/~cschwebe/gsmt800/7principles.htm). This reading reminded about thoughtful use of technology based on educational principles of good teaching practices, and not for the sake of technology itself.

I have thought of making a Webquest, because it’s a kind of tool I haven’t used so far. Sо, this week I have gone through some background reading at Webquest.org (http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php) and sample webquests at Zunal (http://www.zunal.com/index-matrix.php?Curriculum=109&Grade=104). I also thought about the resources for my Webquest and the tasks to go with them. A lot of science and technology-related resources may be found at http://sciencestage.com/resources, http://www.esa.int or http://nasa.ibiblio.org.

Then I feel necessary to integrate some communication tools like a discussion forum and a reflective blog. The platforms may be the ones we have been using in our course. However, there are also some concerns about using Blogger and other Google tools, because I personally experience problems with access to Blogger and Picasa. I hope these problems are temporary, but they need to be taken into consideration when deciding on the choice of tools. I looked through our university educational portal at https://www.do.ektu.kz and found that there is an opportunity to have a forum discussion, and this is accessed from university locations free of charge. It allows attaching files as well. So, this may be an option for class discussion.

Well, this is where I start. I expect spending the following week formulating the task and refining resources for the webquest. There are no classes so far, so this is going to be one of the first technology enhanced tasks for my students in their second year of ESP, and the first in their Translation course in September.

PBL and Webquests

This week I focused on a Webquest more, as this is a tool I haven’t used before, so I read the interview of Bernie Dodge, the author of the technique, and went through some Webuest samples at http://www.zunal.com/ For example, I investigated the “Integration of The Technology Into Life” webquest, and found that it involved a lot of preparation: brainstorming charts, process description, evaluation and teacher pages. I understand that once this tool has been introduced to my teaching it will be easier to develop other webquests and engage students in creating some of their own.

The fact that there is no Internet access in my computer lab does not pose any problem, as websites may be saved for off-line use and still provide motivating content and original layout. I’m just a little bit frustrated about the amount of time it may take to produce creative tasks in order to make students do something close to the real world situations. So, I will try to implement this technique to see how it will work in my situation, with my resources, and my students.

Projects of any kind are very appealing to me. Before I even knew that it was a project, I organized my first one. In October 1999 I wanted to celebrate discovering of America with my students. It didn’t have to be Columbus Day, but something to give them a bite of what America is. We realized that the discovery of America brought extermination to the native Americans. So, my students suggested putting Columbus to trial. They used the web to look for facts for and against Columbus and his discovery. Then they distributed parts, and we had the jury as well. So, nobody actually knew whether the court decision would be “Guilty” or “Not guilty”. And even though Columbus was found guilty by the jury, the court decision was to question the justification of pronouncing Columbus Day a National holiday.

Nowadays I would use rubrics to assess the students’ involvement, performance, oral skills, etc., everything involved in the project. Then my assessment was more subjective and not transparent. So, the students didn’t know the requirements for assessment before performance and were not able to improve it. However, the whole experience was very exciting for them, and they actively took part in other innovative activities.

Using Rubrics

I have already used rubrics for assessment of two things in my classroom: speaking and multimedia presentations. So far a lot of traditional assessment takes place at our university. Multiple choice tests, which are sometimes not well elaborated, are widely used for testing most of the subjects including English. Many test development requirements are not met. Testing is curriculum driven. That is, the curriculum is determined first, and assessment aims at establishing if acquisition of the curriculum occurred. I find it only possible to be used for testing grammar knowledge. When it comes to speaking/writing as productive skills, it becomes clear that traditional assessment lacks objectivity, and teachers rely more on their attitude and emotions, students’ previous performance.  

A rubric presents an objective and transparent tool for assessing student performance. It is a scoring scale with a specific set of criteria. The criteria are assessed according to a level of performance.  It is helpful to communicate the criteria to students before giving them a task, so that they would know what is expected of them. A teacher assesses the level of student performance and can define areas that need improvement. Rubrics can be used by students (for self-assessment), peers (for peer assessment), and teachers.